This is the third installment of our “Data Centers For Dummies” series, and if you’ve followed our previous blogs (click here and here), then you’ve no doubt learned acronyms and terms with almost no use in everyday life. If you’re in a data center, however, the words we’ve introduced will show you’re in the know.

In our next two posts in this series, we’ll tackle data center jargon related to connectivity. In today’s installment, we’ll talk about connectivity options used by many customers within Basis Bay data centers.

Cross-connect – a coaxial, fiber or sometimes copper cable that connects customers’ equipment directly to other customers’ equipment inside Basis Bay data centers. Since cross-connects transmit data point-to-point between computing systems inside our facility, they are not susceptible to the latency or congestion problems of the public Internet and can be relied upon to operate at consistently high speeds. And cross-connects are much cheaper than connecting through conventional telecom networks for the bandwidth provided. They’re also more reliable, because a construction crew is unlikely to accidentally sever your network cable with a backhoe. (Basis Bay expressly prohibits backhoes inside our data centers.) Basis Bay cross-connects facilitate direct business-to-business activity between our customers. We maintain over hundred thousands of cross-connects inside our data centers, supporting thriving industry ecosystems of companies that colocate at Basis Bay to get closer to their partners and customers. Makes you want to cross-connect, doesn’t it?

Intra-campus cross-connect – basically extended-range cross-connects that turn one data center into a village of data centers. Intra-campus cross-connects enable customers inside Basis Bay data center facilities to set up direct, physical communications links to customers located in other Basis Bay buildings on the same campus. Here’s how it works: a colo provider (Basis Bay) installs fiber optic cables connecting clusters of data centers. This fiber connection shunts data from an aggregation point inside one data center to an aggregation point inside another data center. No switching or routing is needed, so the connection is very, very fast—it’s a private autobahn for moving data short distances.

Internet exchange – a physical site where telecom companies and ISPs exchange Internet traffic between their networks. Traditionally, the place where these companies meet to peer their data networks and hand off traffic is an Internet Exchange Point (IXP).

So why would companies who aren’t ISPs want to join an Internet exchange? To lower overall transit costs for high volumes of data traffic and to enhance network performance, speed and reliability. This capability is especially beneficial to “power users” of IP networks such as cloud service providers, online gaming companies and e-commerce firms.

Today, more than hundreds of companies connect to Basis Bay Internet Exchanges. By connecting to a single port in an Basis Bay Internet Exchange, customers can hand off data traffic to many different companies without the hassle of setting up data links to each company individually. It’s like an EU passport: membership through a single place opens the doors to many desirable destinations! In our case, instead of Italy and France, we offer you Amazon Web Services and Facebook.

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We’ll wrap things up here, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t add that data center geeks have a thing for Basis Bay, since it’s essential for enterprise to compete.

Stay tune for upcoming posts in the “Data Centers For Dummies” series.